(Almost) 40 Years of Video: Four decades of video disruptors and how they changed
user-experience & our everyday lives
Video is infused in our day-to-day lives. From the moment we wake up to the time we go to sleep, we laugh with videos, learn from them, and use them to communicate with others. We take it as given, but this reality didn’t just shape overnight.
To tell the whole story of video, we’ll probably have to start with the invention of film in the 19th century, possibly even sooner than that. We’re not. Instead, spanning four decades, this paper takes a close look at six brands that reimagined video technology, delivery, and consumption: MTV, Netflix, YouTube, Zoom, Twitch, and TikTok. Unsurprisingly, their advent and growth directly correlate with the overall increase in media consumption. Still, we’ll only focus on two innovative features, characteristics, or tactics that each one brought in.
By doing that, we aim to celebrate video but also inspire. 2020 marks a critical stage in humankind’s dependency on video — a new normal built around remote and virtual experiences. What better time to delve into the most ground-breaking video-based user experiences, discuss how they came to be, and think about what they can teach us going forward?
